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I’ve been hooked lately on a BBC British television comedy called THE THICK OF IT. It’s the kind of British TV where I miss at least 1/5th of it because I don’t understand the references or can’t quite understand what they’re saying with such thick accents. I muddle through straining my ears to catch the fast flying wit. I can’t tear myself away because of the leading anti-hero, Malcolm Tucker.

Malcolm spends most of his time spewing explicit images of sexual assault and torture at the people who’ve made him angry–which is most of the people most of the time. He does this with great inventive satiric force. He’s a bully. While I’m sure in real life someone like Malcolm would terrify me, giving me permanent heart palpitations, as I’m watching the show, I confess, I relish his appearance. When Malcolm shows up, you knowing the sh** is going to fly. It’s just so wrong, but I’m finding him more and more attractive.

Why? Why is this happening? I don’t know. Well, actually…I think I do know. Malcolm’s a bully, but he’s a labor bully. It’s like the labor party members are rats hopelessly lost in the idiotic maze of bureaucracy and scandal. The rats all want to huddle in a corner, but Malcolm’s job is to keep giving them random shocks so they’ll scamper towards the cheese. He’s a motivating force, the engine of fear and aggression that drives the satirical show.

Moreover, Malcolm speaks nicely to all the cleaning people who come into the government offices late at night and polish the place up. Top all that off with the cherry on top –Malcolm has a great Scottish accent. I sit there listening to the foul invective spitting from his lips like it’s the poetry of Robby Burns.

I wonder if the show’s creators realized how hot Hugh Laurie would be as House?

I guess it’s like being attracted to Hugh Grant’s character on House. Cranky, mean, disrespectful?– yes, yes, and yes. But the characters share some traits in common:

1) They care about their jobs with a single-minded intensity.

2) They don’t stop caring. They care way more than anyone else.

3) They keep trying and won’t stop trying until they are successful (or the patient is dead).

4) They exude absolute confidence, intelligence, and dexterity in all their doings.

Sounds heroic, yes?

5) Other than that, they keep the bar really low when it comes to behaving well. This trait is something that I, for some perverse reason, always find super-comfortable to be around.

These admirable traits, buried in obviously flawed characters, make them deeply appealing–to me at least.

House’s character — much like Malcolm Tucker’s character — is basically heartless. That just adds to the appeal somehow. It’s so unfair, but when these characters do show a tiny drop of compassion or decency, it goes a long, long way.

So are there any heartless anti-heros out there that you sigh over? I have a friend who had a crush on Richard III for awhile. Meanwhile, they say a book is only as good as its villain. Recommend your favorite romance villains in the comments section below. Or maybe mention them on twitter? #GreatRomanceVillains Here’s my twitter handle– @madelineiva.

P.S. You can find THICK OF IT on hulu. There was a movie called In The Loop that is based on the television show that’s every bit as good.

He has an unattractive name, long girly hair, and he hangs out with men who cry a lot. Who would think that a minor character from a Y.A. novel could be so hot? But he is— meltingly, drool worthy, crush-worthy hot. Yes, we’re talking about the unexpectedly sexy today–and how unexpectedly melting an elf can be.

Legolas portrayed by Orlando Bloom in The Fellowship Of the Rings did what Tolkien had been trying to do in his writing for decades–convince people that elves don’t have to be tiny green men, they can be lithe, angelic vessels of perfection.

My obsession began many years ago when I was dragged over the holidays by a relative to watch The Fellowship of the Ring on the first weekend it opened. I vaguely remembered a tiny bit about the book from reading it long, long ago. I was watching it happily, when suddenly he appeared. Wait–who is that? Who was he in the book again? Watching then became an act of waiting for him to appear in each scene, sucking in each moment that was his, and when I got home for the first time in my life, I think, I did an internet search for images of him. The geeky relative wanted to see the movie again. And again. I was happy to go.

Orlando Bloom, unfortunately, never quite lived up to the magic he created in the role of Legolas in that first film. I watched, I waited, I saw him slide down from that magnificent potential into a less-than-central role in a massive Disney franchise.

And hey–did anyone notice the weird stuff they had going on in the third film between him and Aragorn? Why yes, a whole nation did.

In the trilogy Tolkien wrote, Legolas and Gimly the dwarf have chemistry together. At the end they go off together to adventure some more. In the movie, even though Aaragorn has a love interest, she’s off stage a lot, and lets face it, she was so good in that role, but they didn’t have the best chemistry ever.

Face it Arwen, he’s just not that into you.

Instead, Legolas and Aaragorn had chemistry. Perhaps this was a mistaken move on the part of a studio suit who thought “hey, if we get the hotties of the film together into the same frame a lot, women would combust.” Instead, Legolas who was so pretty and Aaragorn who was so bearded and manly fit into another kind of trope entirely and the whole thing spun out of control.

Here’s the scuttlebutt on that: the Rings project was so huge, there was no way that Peter Jackson could keep track of it all. He had to delegate, and then delegate some more. Since he wasn’t even on site for much of the shooting, crews had a lot of lee-way. So a few men with a sense of humor used that wiggle room to set up moments and shots between Legolas and Aaragorn that they would later re-edit the film making it into a romance between Legolas and Aragorn. It’s out there on the internet somewhere still, I think.

Yet it didn’t need a nation finding a bootleg edit of the film on the internet to catch on. It’s all right up there on the screen. There’s a moment in the third movie where Legolas thinks Aragorn is lost as he finds a necklace Aragorn’s love gave to Aaragorn and that Aaragorn always wears. He keeps it, but later when Aaragorn turns up, Legolas has a moment with his compadre where he returns the necklace to Aaragorn. This moment is observed by a woman who’s fallen for Aaragorn (she’s not his love interest). She watches the return of the necklace. Perhaps she’s supposed to understand by looking at the necklace that Aaragorn is carrying a sort of elf-engagement ring from some other girl. But it looks and feels and smells to all of us in the audience like m/m romance going on right under our hetero-centric noses and this woman is figuring it out, and is crushed as a result. And thus a thousand fan fiction sights are launched. In these fan fiction sights Aagorn and Legolas overcome that girlfriend barrier, and other barriers to their secret love, and they’re gettin’ it on big time.

Don’t hate me, Aaragorn fans, but he never did much for me. I guess I just don’t like beards. Anyway, what Legolas did inspire was a story I’ve written about a Wicked Apprentice who mistakenly captures a half-man, half-elf. This guy is a hottie, chained in a cell. He’s her captive and the thought of him being under her control gets her feeling something quite strong. She gets him all hot and bothered and when she does his eyes change from human green to elf black. Which just makes her all the more curious to see what happens with their clothes off. However, her power to arouse him flips him into elf mode, and in elf mode, he has the power to seduce her until she can’t think straight. Under those mesmerizing black eyes, she finds herself doing things she never thought she would want to do…

The elf in Wicked Apprentice, Theodorus, has auburn hair, not long silver hair, but he started out with some of that same otherworldly purity of nature, only it’s been corrupted by the harsh world around him. The heroine, Zephyr is able to help him regain it, but Theodorus also has something in him that Tolkien put in a lot of his elves and that we don’t see with Legolas. He has a fey side–a wild passion that often leads to perversity. It comes out when his elf nature takes hold–as it frequently does when he’s around Zephyr. It’s this willingness to plunge over the edge into the unknown out of sheer abandon that traps them both in a circle of magic from which they cannot escape.

I love my character and I love his story…it’s out with agents and editors and such. Hope you’ll get to read it one day soon!

Lady Smut is a blog for intelligent women who like to read smut. On this blog we talk about our writing, the erotic romance industry, masculinity, femininity, sexuality, and whatever makes our pulses race.